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Hard work but good fun

Well, that's July now gone and the summer has just been a blur, especially the last 2 weeks.

The month started with a visit to the Scottish Parliament to meet Aileen Campbell MSP, the new Minister for Public Health and Sport in Scotland. It was our first public engagement as the new Young peoples sports panel and it was my first visit to the Parliament - we were warmly welcomed and it was great to hear firsthand from the minister just how important it is in getting young people involved in sport and the benefits it can bring not only to health but all areas of society.

Then from mid July onwards, I've been full on at training camps with the British Nordic Ski Team. These were up in the North of Scotland so easy for me to get to with the first one being in my home town of Huntly, then onto Aviemore where we had a week long summer camp with athletes from all over the UK, Europe and beyond.

What was great about this first camp was that we got to train with the senior elite athletes including the two Andrews Musgrave and Young. Both of these guys started in Huntly, like me, and now are up there with the top cross country skiers in the world. They both have been to 2 Olympic Games each and its great to work alongside them and learn from their vast experience.

What was even better, although they would disagree, is that we are beginning to catch up with them and we gave them a good run for their money in the interval sessions although they can wipe the floor with us on the distance and endurance workouts.

We learned so much these couple of weeks and the best part of the week was the race up the Cairngorm mountain. Now, I wouldn't normally put this down as one of my top things having done it a few times, but the sight of so many skiers climbing the mountain was awe inspiring - especially in the UK - not a sight you see that often and we got so may supportive shout outs from passing cars it was great.

Now with the main summer camps out of the way, it's back to the normal training regime again and the weekly routine which I have to build up for winter.

This winter is important to me as I need to make sure I can qualify for the European Youth Olympics for TeamGB. This means that I have to secure as low points as I can get at my winter races. This means hard work during the summer to build the platform for the on snow performance. Later in the year, we'll be back in the snow tunnel in Sweden which is an indoor cross country ski track and allows us to train on snow even in the height of summer.

But until then, it's a 2 hour classic session this Sunday morning before heading off to work this afternoon - got to pay for a some new skis.


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